Tag: record every month challenge

Drizzly Morning Car Music

I had four songs ready for me to record vocals and I just got home from recording in the car. I picked off all four songs. Sweet.

Now I have four songs ready to mix, four ready for lead guitars, eight ready for lyrics, and one still waiting on rhythm guitars. How much of that pile of stuff will I get to today? Hopefully a good chunk of it all. It’s a music kinda day today, I think.

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Yup, He Played Guitar Today

I had two song ideas left over from May that hadn’t been worked into a song form yet. I took care of both of them while watching an episode of The X Files and eating some breakfast. When that was done I put guitar tracks on both songs. That leaves me with two songs still needing rhythm guitar tracks. Both are leftover from May.

That means I have 11 songs ready for lyrics now, and two more that are almost ready for lyrics. Yikes! I need to get cracking on that. Lots of car music in my near future, eh? There are still four songs waiting to be mixed as well. Got to get moving! It’s June 22nd. There are only eight days left in June! If I do a faux 50/90 this year I might include July 1-3 in June too. 50/90 doesn’t start until July 4th. We’ll see how far I get.

Two pictures because I am getting tired of this and getting lazy.

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Okay, Robert. Let’s go get ready for work.

Morning Routine

The morning routine today was a little upended. Usually I have some water with my morning vitamins, then yog in the cellar and have some more water. I stop drinking after about 15 minutes of exercise so that my 15 minute pause between drinking and eating will be up when I finish exercising and I can just have breakfast right away. for the last couple of weeks I’ve been playing guitar after I finish breakfast.

Today I had some water while walking and running outside, but I didn’t have my pills until I got back inside. I took a shower during my 15 minute pause and then had breakfast while watching Spaced. When breakfast was done I played guitar and then punched into work immediately after I finished.

I put rhythm guitars onto a May song, and lead guitars onto a June song. The streak is at 13 days and I am 90% sure it ends today. Tomorrow is an in the office day and I really don’t expect to be able to get any playing in before I have to start getting ready. The whole morning routine goes right down the crapper on commuting days. We’ll see what happens. I pulled it off last week, but with a new Marvel show kicking off tomorrow, Secret Invasion, I don’t know how things will go. Fingers crossed, right?

Pictures. This was focused on the pick up.

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This was focused on the poker chip/pick up switch.

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This was focused on the truss rod cover (aka the word “Standard”).

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This was focused on the treble knob.

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This was focused on BABY YODA, BABIE!

This was focused on the left food switch, I think. I don’t quite remember.

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10 June Songs

Yesterday’s music output was decent. I put guitars on two songs in the morning. Later I wrote lyrics for two songs and mixed another song. Before bed I started a new song idea and that makes 10 for the month of June. I’m not saying I will finish my album in a month goal for June, but it’s a whole lot easier to reach it when you actually have the correct number of songs in progress. Now, having said that, I had 10 songs in progress in May as well and I didn’t finish any of them so… yeah.

The guitar playing streak is up to 11 days. I think today might be the last day though. I think I want to do car vocals tomorrow instead. We’ll see. I also might want to start the couch to 5k stuff tomorrow. I am still undecided. Again, we’ll see. I did spend about 20 minutes playing today though. I put rhythm guitars on the new song idea from last night. That means all 10 June songs have rhythm guitars now. Good stuff!

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Record Every Month for April: Complete

I have finished two songs for the Record Every Month Challenge for April. My mini-challenge of recording a single each month is still on track. My mini challenge of recording an EP in April crashed and burned. That’s okay.

The A Side is okay. The B Side is garbage. I used my SG and my Vox MV50 on all of the guitar tracks, and recorded everything direct into my iPad. I also mixed on the iPad, which might explain why the mixes are worse than the usual crap.

Here’s the A Side:

Here’s the uber crappy B Side:

Next month will use my Les Paul and my Deluxe Reverb, and my new King of Tone overdrive pedal which I waited over five years to get and still haven’t even plugged in. That changes starting tomorrow. Until then, enjoy this crap.

Possible April Music Plan

I haven’t done much for the record every month thing this month. I have a couple of less than good ideas in GarageBand on my iPad but they aren’t really worth pursuing. What should I do? I might have a plan for something to force some music out of me.

I am off work on Monday and Tuesday. We are having new windows installed on those days and I took them off so that I could be available to the crew doing the work if they need anything. Other than letting them into the house, I can’t imagine I will have much to do so I have been planning on hanging out in the cellar (or if the weather is nice, maybe on the patio in the backyard) watching Star Wars Rebels (I’m a smidge over half way through my rewatch) and The X-Files. Maybe I should plan to use those two days for music.

I also recently bought a new iRig so that I can run my guitar into my iPad again. Maybe to shake things up I could restrict myself to GarageBand on my iPad instead of mostly using it on my MacBook Pro. That could be fun. Maybe I could further restrict things by using the cab sim on my Vox MV50 and using that for an amp. That way I could use an amp and not be super loud and annoying while the window folks are working upstairs. That could be fun too. I’d probably also restrict myself to a single overdrive pedal. I tried doing that in February with the Keeley Super Phat Mod (the one pedal that I want to really love but somehow cannot bond with) before switching to the Chicago Stompworks Blooze Maker.

I wouldn’t be able to pull off an album in a day thing, but maybe I could try to do an album in two days? I’d have to record vocals in the car on Tuesday morning before the window people arrive. Maybe I could just plan to do as much music as possible over the two days and then finish off whatever I don’t get to afterwards. I don’t know.

I think a plan has been formed. Let’s see if I can actually follow it and pull anything off. Maybe I could spend two days working on my iPad, and then take any music that I manage to finish and redo it on the MacBook and end up with two different versions of each song. I did that once back in 2014 where I did an album in June with each song mixed on the iPad and the MacBook. Huh… maybe.

Let’s see what happens.

B-Side

The second of two songs for March is complete. I guess. The vocals are atrocious and the whole thing feels kinda blah. The song is okay, I just didn’t play it very well. It could use a little editing and a little… enthusiasm? Maybe? It’s fine for a B-Side. The other song is much better.

Another Long Day

Another long day filled with a gaggle of long, frustrating meetings and problems. 18 minutes until the weekend. I think we’re in a position right now where we will be able to call it a day at quittin’ time, but I’m not going to count my chickens until they hatch.

What’s in the queue for the weekend? Not sunrise at the ocean pictures because the weather forecast is crappy. Tonight we’ll have our third Hello Fresh meal. The first two were excellent and I expect good things from the turkey meal we have lined up for tonight.

I have to mix a song. It’s the last day of the month so I need to finish off the second of two songs I worked on this month before midnight so that I can complete my personal write and record a single challenge. The first song was done a couple of nights ago. The second song isn’t as good, and the performance is worse, but it’s still worth finishing. Tomorrow is April 1st so the Record Every Month challenge resets and I can start working on something new. I’m thinking about using the tremolo built into my amplifier this time. I never use it… so maybe I should.

Jen has a project in her office that we’re going to work on. She wants to change a bunch of things on her desk. We haven’t done that in a while so it will be fun to mix it up. I am thinking of changing things up on my desk too, but I think I want to wait a month until the window replacement project is complete. I don’t know why but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

My exercise and calorie (move) goals are done for today. My liquid intake goal is also done. I have a few more hours before my stand goal is done, and almost half of my protein goal is still outstanding. I’m behind on that one, by quite a bit. I’ll hit it though.

Okay, time to sign off. I still have nine minutes left in the work week. The weekend is so close… so very, very close. I’m ready for it.